Monthly Archives: January 2018

More mothers are becoming pregnant later in life, and while some pregnancy complications occur with greater frequency among older mothers, whether preterm birth can be independently associated with maternal age has required more investigation. In a new PLOS ONE study,…

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been associated with dementia, but the association has not been studied over a long period of time. Anna Nordström and Peter Nordström from Umeå University in Sweden recently published a study in PLOS Medicine that…

In the effort to eradicate polio, the World Health Organization established the Global Polio Laboratory Network (GPLN), a network of 145 labs designed to process polio tests. It turns out that these labs are also well-equipped to help tackle neglected…

The principles of network science have been used to study systems from computer chip components to social media users. And while we have been studying the human body since ancient times, application of these network principles has now built the…

Many people might have set themselves the New Year’s resolution to “get fit” – but what does that really mean? Both the amount of abdominal fat and level of inflammation have been previously linked to an increased risk of metabolic…

Houseflies (Musca domestica) aren’t just annoying; they contaminate food and spread disease among humans and animals worldwide. But they rapidly evolve resistance to the usual insecticides, prompting the proposal of an alternative control strategy: RNA interference using double stranded RNA…

The Phoenicians were an ancient civilization that emerged in 1800 B.C. in the northern Levant and by 800 B.C. had spread their culture across the Mediterranean to parts of Asia, Europe and Africa through trade networks and settlements. Despite their…

Marine life provides income and food for people throughout the world, making it important to understand how climate change might alter the balance of the oceans. In a new PLOS Biology study, Ivan Nagelkerken and colleagues constructed an aquarium system…

This article was written by Eileen Clancy and appeared in the PLOS EveryONE Blog on January 4, 2018. [Above image: Flying bumblebee. Mikkel Houmøller, wikimedia] As we ring in the New Year, we thought it would be fun to look back…

The peak epidemic season for plague in Madagascar is fast approaching, but its severity could be significantly reduced with improvements to the country’s public health system, according to a new Viewpoint published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. I interviewed lead…